Triad suspicions in Fiji

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Chinese organised crime is gaining a foothold in one of Australia's favourite tourist destinations, Fiji.

As well as major drug operations involving heroin and methamphetamines destined for Australia and other regional markets, there have been murders and what locals refer to as a "flood" of Chinese prostitutes.

The women arriving to work at new brothels reportedly have to pay a fee of $US4000 ($5800) to a "Mr Big" Chinese criminal in the restaurant business.

Late last year there were suspicions of triad connections with the shooting murders of three Chinese men in a dispute involving a large amount of money earmarked to buy shark fins for export to Hong Kong.

Now a Hong Kong-based Chinese is being investigated over this week's raid in Fiji on the largest methamphetamine factory found in the southern hemisphere. Seven people were arrested during the bust in the capital, Suva.

The massive amount of chemicals seized early on Wednesday morning had been transported by ship from Malaysia and sources say this fact lay behind six publicly unexplained arrests in Malaysia this week.

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The crew of the ship had no idea when they arrived in Suva earlier this year that they were under surveillance.

But an "Operation Outrigger" team, comprising Australian Federal Police and Fijian and New Zealand colleagues, was waiting for them. The investigators had

held off from raiding the laboratory because under Fiji law they needed to seize the illegal finished product. When about five kilograms of methamphetamine had been produced in special vats, they struck.

Also impounded was a tonne of chemicals, which police said could have produced "ice" with a street value of more than $770 million.

Six of those arrested were remanded in custody yesterday - four Chinese-Hong Kong passport holders, a Chinese man who lived in Fiji, and his ethnic Chinese wife, born in Fiji. A Fijian man is still being questioned. All the defendants tried to hide their faces.

In Hong Kong, a middle-aged man was charged this week with money laundering in connection with the Suva swoop and sources said a senior triad figure was on the run.

There are claims that the methamphetamine laboratory is linked to a Hong Kong-based syndicate which shipped 300 kilograms of heroin to Suva four years ago to be held for sale in Australia and elsewhere.